


Black Sheep

by Nerd_of_Camelot



Series: Black Sheep [9]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Agony, Alternate Universe, Anger, Assassination Attempt(s), Attempted Murder, BUT ONLY ONCE, Betrayal, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Gen, Human Experimentation, Military Jargon, Not Canon Compliant, Plot, Plotty, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27506410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerd_of_Camelot/pseuds/Nerd_of_Camelot
Summary: Jack woke in the middle of a violent coughing fit, so cold that he barely even felt it.Surrounded by snow on all sides, he couldn't recall how he arrived there or why.
Series: Black Sheep [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608928
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Black Sheep

**Author's Note:**

> plot time babeyyyyyy!!

Jack woke up in the middle of a violent coughing fit, trembling from head to toe, and so cold he barely even felt it.

Where…?

He forced himself up as the coughing intensified and he gagged. Bile splattered onto the pure white in front of him that contrasted so sharply against his clothes. His clothes that seemed coated in the white substance.

As his coughing ceased, his brain began to function.

White, cold, covering his clothes and the ground… Snow. He was in the snow. But that didn’t make sense ― there wasn’t an area where snow collected for at least fifty miles in any direction from the base. And he didn’t remember leaving the base last night…

The last thing he remembered was being called away from his obligatory post-op snuggle-session with Genji to talk to their Commander, but after that…

He slowly worked himself to his feet, wondering if maybe Genji had pranked him somehow. Gotten him drunk after he got back from talking to their Commander and dumped him out here just for shits and giggles, not thinking about how it might actually turn out. He’d done things like that in the past. It wouldn’t be a surprise to Jack, by now.

He brushed the snow off of him the best he could with his chill-stiffened joints that seemed even harder to move than they ought to be. How long had he been out here?

Blue eyes lifted from his body to examine the area around him, and all at once his stomach and heart dropped through the Earth beneath him.

He knew the valleys and mountains around the primary base within a fifty miles, just like everyone else. He’d been trained in the woods there, frozen and otherwise. He’d crawled a good deal of it on his belly, avoiding the potshots the CO’s fired at them with paintball guns for  _ days _ until he made it back to base with only two marks to show he’d been struck. He knew those fifty square miles of generally secluded property like the  _ back of his hand _ after all these years, so this…

This was cause for concern.

The icy expanse before him was completely unfamiliar, empty and lacking any landmarks that may have allowed him to get his bearings. Dread, a feeling by now not terribly familiar to him as he’d grown accustomed to being the one inspiring it in others, knotted his stomach and left a lump in his throat.

Genji would not have gotten him drunk and dragged him this far away from the base. He wouldn’t have had time before Jack sobered up. For him to have absolutely no recognition of any of the surrounding area… This had to be  _ at least _ fifty miles outside the main compound, which meant it was at least 55 outside the actual base… Probably  _ further. _ Genji was  _ fast, _ as a successful SEP subject, but he was not  _ that _ fast ― not when dragging another full-grown man. Especially one who would have been squirming.

And then there was the issue of his total lack of a hangover ― like almost every fucking thing else, the SEP hadn’t had much effect on how long those lasted. If he’d been drunk last night, he should be hungover now.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat and winced at the dryness.

Panic teased at the back of his mind, but he pushed it away and tried to focus. Maybe this was a surprise training exercise.

He forced his heavy limbs to respond to him and turned to try, again, to get his bearings, and to look for a supply pack. Surprise training exercises always had a supply pack. It wasn’t much, but it was at least a lighter and a knife, most of the time.

There was no pack in sight. And no tracks in the snow ― only the indention of where he’d been laying.

He swallowed again.

Okay.

So not a training exercise―or not a typical one, at least. Maybe as an SEP survivor, a member of Phobia’s “Death Order”, a former member of both their Special Forces and Bane Divisions, a celebrated veteran hero from the Omnic Crisis,  _ and _ an honorary Shimada because of his training under Genji, he was being given some kind of special training.

Maybe that was all this was.

Maybe they were testing him. Making sure his survival skills were still sharp enough after six months of no conflict. Still sharp after six months of nothing but covert ops where all that was tested was his endurance and ability to stay silent.

Even if that wasn’t what this was, he would operate under that pretense until given enough reason not to.

He took a deep breath and gazed at his surroundings once more. There was a mountain in that direction, woods in that direction… The woods were the best choice. Plenty of shelter and ways to  _ make _ shelter if there wasn’t any. He would head that way.

He took a couple of stiff steps in the forest’s direction, pushing through the heaviness in his muscles and the stiffness in his joints. He couldn’t stay here. He’d freeze to death here.

He made his way toward the trees in stops and starts, body becoming sore as he got his blood circulating again. He felt battered. What kind of fight had he put up against the others to feel this bad? Sure, he’d been drugged before a training session before, but he’d never struggled as hard as it felt like he did this time. He had to be sedated to get him complacent enough to be transported, he knew that, but even when he fought it he didn’t fight hard. He understood that training missions were important.

He felt like he had after his first session with Genji ― sore from head to toe, muscles tightening in places they shouldn’t and making him seize up.

The pain wasn’t terrible just yet. It was like a distant echo; memories of the pain he’d had when he woke up the day after Genji first took him through the motions, but not something he was experiencing right now.

He had to move quicker if he wanted to keep from succumbing to the cold.

When he entered the trees he regretted it.

The temperature dropped further beneath the canopy, but there was little to be done for now. He had to keep moving until he found somewhere safe to hole up and try to warm himself up.

He checked himself as he walked, trying to see if he had any items that could help him. They wouldn’t have emptied his pockets, he was sure. If they wanted him without his usual tricks they’d have made him change into his civvies. Out of his so-called “uniform”.

He still had his knives. Still had his pistol tucked against the back of his hip under his jacket. The experimental hatchet he’d been given during the Crisis was deactivated and folded neatly into the inside pocket of his jacket, where it always was. His first aid supplies were still in the pack on his thigh, and, honestly, the only thing he found to be missing from his person was his Comm.

That was troubling, but not unusual. Comms weren’t allowed on training missions unless it was a team mission.

When he began to feel warmth seeping into his bones, worry began to gnaw at him. that was one of the first signs of hypothermia, wasn’t it? Feeling warm.

He needed to find or make shelter  _ now. _

He didn’t know how long he’d been walking, but when he looked back and couldn’t see the entrance to the trees, he knew it was too long. He’d already been out here too long before he’d even awoken, he was certain.

His eyes raked over the trees before him, hoping to find something that was at least a suitable start to a temporary camp.

In the distance, it looked as if there was a building hidden in the trees, and before he could think about it, his feet were carrying him toward it.

A cabin.

It looked like it had taken a hell of a beating, but the walls looked sturdy enough and it didn’t seem to be occupied.

The door creaked open the moment he touched it, and he winced at the sound and the implication that it no longer latched. But that was fine. He’d make do.

A wave of pain struck him as he stepped into the only slightly warmer confines of the cabin. It wouldn’t stay warm long if he didn’t get inside and get a fire started soon, though. And if he didn’t find a way to latch the door.

So he fought past the pain and examined the dark room he’d emerged into. His eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom, and in the corner he saw a pile of firewood. It looked old, probably half-rotted, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. It would work for a fire… Presumably. If it didn’t, he’d find out.

He closed the door to the best of his ability and stiffly moved a previously overturned chair under the knob to keep it closed. All of his muscles felt like they were seizing up and burning away, which… Was unfortunately familiar. It wasn’t something he’d felt  _ recently, _ but he remembered it.

It was the worst pain of his life.

This was what the SEP injections had made him feel, though it was on a far lower level of intensity now than that had been.

He stumbled to the pile of wood, finding it to be much newer than he’d expected. Good. Awesome. He threw a few pieces in the fireplace and dug out his hatchet and one of his longer knives.

It took a while to get a spark, but thankfully that spark ignited a stray twig immediately, allowing him to set fire to the rest of the wood in the fireplace.

He stripped off his boots and jacket as the fire grew, sitting on the quickly warming floor in front of the fireplace and trying hard not to think of the pain. He needed to get warm before he let himself succumb to anything of that nature.

When his limbs were no longer stiff with cold, only with pain, he lifted himself up and crossed the now lit room to identify where the bathroom was and which offshoot room was the kitchen.

There were four rooms altogether ― the living room, a bathroom, the kitchen, and a single bedroom. The bathroom and bedroom had small vents near the floor that, on closer inspection, led to the wall behind the wood-burning stove in the kitchen, which honestly looked like it hadn’t seen any cooking use in a good,  _ long _ time. He cleaned out the ash trough with pained fingers, added some wood, and worked a while to get a fire started.

There was a gas stove on the other side of the room, which seemed redundant until he considered that maybe the wood-burning stove was only meant as a central heating system. He knew they were considered to be one of the best house-wide heating systems in the world, even in the modern day when most people preferred the technological approach rather than the rustic.

Retrieving his boots and jacket after looking around for a moment, he took a bucket he found under the sink and made his way back outside. He shovelled snow into the bucket with his hands until it was packed full and his fingers were numb again. He didn’t want to use the sink ― what if the pipes were frozen?

He’d just boil the snow, thanks. There was plenty of that.

He rummaged through the cabinets until he found a large enough pot and dumped some of the snow into it.

For one, he needed water to drink.

For two, adding a little bit of water to the air in here would help it feel less horrible. Keep his skin from drying out too bad. And it’d keep the heat in a little better.

He stood, shaking from the pain, until the water began to boil. He removed it from the heat, dumped a small amount into a bowl he’d found and swished it around a moment to remove all the dust from the interior of the bowl before he dumped it down the sink. Dumped more in and spent a moment just waiting for it to cool off enough to drink and then swigged it. His aching throat thanked him, but he wasn’t sure how long it was going to stay down, if he was honest.

He repeated the process once, then set another pot of snow on the stove to simply boil for a while. He tried to breathe deeply, stripping his boots and jacket back off and tossing his soggy gloves into the pile for the time being. Now that the place was heating up he was a little less worried about letting himself go, but…

He still needed to wait a while. Let the air get a little more humid and maybe start actually thinking about why he was here and what was happening. Why he was in so much pain. Why he felt like he was going through the SEP all over again, with the intensity increasing with every passing moment to the point it was actually starting to feel  _ exactly _ like the injections had.

But he didn’t think he was going to manage much on the ‘thinking’ front until after the pain had decreased to a more manageable level.

The most he was going to be able to do was wait until the air felt less dry, and even that was questionable at this point.

He tossed some more wood into the wood stove, barely even able to grip the pieces, and decided he couldn’t wait any longer.

He shut off the burner, unable to lift the pan with his aching, trembling hands, and simply stumbled his way to the bedroom.

Stumbled to the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed without a care for how sanitary it was. He didn’t have the time, nor the presence of mind, to care.

* * *

His sleep was fitful, at best.

He laid there who knew how many hours shuddering and whimpering through the pain, trying desperately not to scream. Not to yell for Gabe, or Genji.

Or Jesse.

It wouldn’t do him any good to scream for them when they couldn’t hear him, and what little dignity he could cling to through the agony refused to allow him to sink so low as to scream for help.

Still.

He sobbed in relief when the pain finally began to subside, eyes cracking open and seeing the wall and nothing else. The blur of tears, relieved and exhausted, took even that from him soon enough… His eyes slid closed again.

The pain wasn’t gone, not even close, but it was manageable.

He sobbed again, because he couldn’t even feel his body ― he flexed his fingers and felt no sensation whatsoever from the movement ―, but that was so much better than what he’d been feeling before. Sensation would return, eventually. Hopefully the pain wouldn’t.

Unconsciousness surged up and took him.

* * *

_ “It’s okay,” Gabe’s voice uttered, and fingers carded through his hair softly, “You’re gonna be okay, Jackie.” _

_ He still felt awful, body aching in every cell, but somehow the touch didn’t make him feel worse, didn’t set his nerves alight with liquid fire. It felt… Soothing. _

_ Gabe’s touch was cool and soft, soothing away some of the ache. _

_ The cold washed through every part of him Gabe touched, a much-appreciated reprieve from the pain. _

_ “Gabe,” He murmured, brows knitting, and he could  _ **_feel_ ** _ it. _

_ He could feel the touch, and his own movements. _

_ Finally. _

_ “Shh,” Gabe laid his palm over his forehead and his eyes, easing the headache he hadn’t even known he had, and the coldness spread down his face like water, “Just rest, cariño. You’ll need your strength. We’ll get you out of this janky-ass cabin when you’re able to walk again.” _

_ The cold spread, a little faster, down his neck to his chest. _

_ A hand landed on his chest, hurrying the cold further down. _

_ It washed all the way to his feet, and every inch of him was cold. No longer aching. _

_ “Gabe,” He tried again, “How did you―” _

_ He shifted and… _

The dream fell apart.

He opened his eyes into the darkness of the cabin bedroom.

“― find me?” He uttered, voice dry and cracked.

But he was alone.

His chest ached.

What a cruel joke for his mind to play.

But it hadn’t joked about the coldness, or the sudden lack of pain.

Just about how he’d gotten that way.

He heaved himself out of the bed, and it didn’t so much as creak. His feet made no sound as they touched the floor. The floorboard that had creaked on his way in here made no sound as he made his way back out into the rest of the cabin.

The whole place was silent and still as the grave.

Dark, too, casting everything in total monochrome.

… But not making it impossible to see, strangely enough. Even the darkest corners looked scarcely any different than the rest of the cabin ― simply a darker shade of grey than everything else. That was odd, but not necessarily unwelcome.

If night vision was what re-experiencing all the pain of his injections had given him, he would certainly have some complaints… But only in that he’d always sort of hoped he’d get more than that. The pain almost wasn’t worth it for this, but, hey. He was a stealth operative. It certainly had its uses.

He carefully lit the fireplace back up, and the growing light of the fire cast a soft golden tint into the shades of grey he was seeing. When it was at full strength and he was starting to feel a little warm again, his vision returned more or less to normal ― the shadows in the corners were simply shadows instead of full detailed pieces of the room cast in a dark gold-brown. What he could make out without focusing on any one thing was about the same as normal, although his eyesight in general seemed to have improved.

The cabin, save for the crackling of the fire, was utterly silent.

His gloves, jacket, and boots were dry, for the most part, which didn’t exactly give him warm and fuzzy feelings about how long he’d probably been here.

He frowned and laid the items out in front of the fireplace individually to allow them to finish drying.

Okay.

He needed a plan of attack.

He had… What, two new abilities now? And that could be of a great deal of use to him in getting out of here and either back to base or to a town so that he could reorient himself. Total silence and night vision were… Well. He could use that.

Still.

So, setting off toward either town or the base would be a hell of a lot easier if he just knew where he was, but without his Comm on him he was screwed on figuring out direction until he could get to an area with appropriate access to the sun. He may just have to pick a direction and run.

… Right after he got some food in him.

He did still need to eat, right? Like… He wasn’t hungry, but he would assume food was still a necessity.

He could work on that on the way to civilization, he guessed.

He snatched an old duffel bag from beneath the bed after a few moments of searching the cabin for anything useful, and decided his best bet would be grabbing some wood, the bowl and the pot he’d used to boil the snow, and all the blankets he could shove into the bag. He’d make do with it.

The blankets, if nothing else, would help him put up a tent or something.

He’d need one in this weather.

As long as there were animals, he and his pistol and knives could manage.

He stayed in front of the fire until his clothes had warmed and dried, then pulled them on without so much as a rustle of cloth. That would take getting used to.

But he could get used to it.

He shouldered the bag, heavy though it was, and left the cabin.

The only sound he heard was the door creaking after he’d already stepped off the porch.

* * *

Four days of walking ― five days total, after he had to stay in his makeshift shelter for a day to wait out a snowstorm ― found him, at last, on the edge of the closest town to the Phobia base. The familiar buildings and landscape would have made him sob with relief if he didn’t feel so…

Cold.

Not physically, though he certainly didn’t feel  _ warm _ physically, just… Emotionally.

Seeing town  _ should _ have made him at least feel a little relieved or a little happy. Instead he just felt… Nothing. Or, well, something cold in the core of his chest that he couldn’t quite identify. Something he thought should maybe hurt, for all the jagged edges it seemed to have, but did not.

He picked his way down into the town.

A shudder of pain wracked through him, and he ignored it as he’d been ignoring every sudden spark of it.

The intensity had never gone back to what it had been in the cabin, but it was there at every moment. He’d mostly grown used to it.

Numb to it, even.

He was quietly making his way through the back streets, toward an old cafe where he could maybe catch a couple of Phobia operatives and try to… He didn’t know. Extract information? Catch a ride back to base?

“Lieutenant Commander Morrison!” Someone hissed, suddenly.

He turned.

A Phobia agent, still wearing their jacket ― the small symbol over their sleeve indicated they were from the Death Order.

“Corporal.” He said, squinting at the symbol over their chest.

“Sir,” They snapped a stiff salute to him, then said, “You’re in danger out in the open here, sir. There are some folks who might just drag you back to base by your hair.”

The genuine concern in their face as they said it, though they seemed to be fighting to keep their cool, made him inclined to believe they genuinely thought it was an issue. He straightened his back a little, and a new wave of pain lanced through him momentarily. He shrugged it off.

“And why is that, Corporal?”

They winced at that and said, hesitantly, “The Commanders aint happy, sir, and neither is anybody higher up the chain. Say you turned traitor.”

He twitched a little at that.

Turned traitor?

He had nowhere else in the fucking world to go. Phobia wasn’t  _ perfect _ but being there was better than trying to find a place to settle down, or  _ worse _ trying to  _ fight them. _

“Is that so?”

“Yessir,” Said the Corporal, wincing again, “Commander Reyes don’t believe a word of it, ‘n neither do McCree or Shimada… Generals have got ‘em so damn busy, though, they can’t do nothin’. Leaves the rest of us Order folks to try ‘n figure it all out...”

Jack found himself squinting, jaw clenching. His mind caught, of all the information he’d just been given, on one minute detail. Something very small.

But something, at the same time,  _ very _ big.

_ “Commander _ Reyes?” He asked, and once more the Corporal winced ― this one was far more pronounced.

“Y-yessir.” They said, “They gave ‘im Commander Majors’ spot, sir.”

Jack reined in the sudden jagged,  _ cold _ anger that seared through him. Took a breath and felt the chill settle back into his bones despite the marginally higher temperature here in town. Eyed the Corporal for a long, long moment.

“I see.” He said, evenly, pressing down his pain in order to ignore it even when it spiked again, “Get me whatever information you can, Corporal. I’ll find some place to hunker down.”

“There’s a broken-down house just outside’a town,” The Corporal offered, “Nobody goes down that way. Should be safe. Y’can get to the back door through the woods.”

“Perfect. You have your orders, then.”

The Corporal snapped him a salute instantly, and Jack had the faintest hints of a warm feeling to accompany the thought of ‘ _ at least  _ **_some_ ** _ people are loyal.’ _

He stomped that thought out quickly and viciously.

“Yes, sir. I’ll report in as soon as I can.”

And then the Corporal disappeared, and Jack made his way toward the house they’d mentioned.

* * *

He stayed in that house for two months before the Corporal arrived at the back door looking grave.

“Lieutenant Commander Morrison, sir.” They saluted, “Permission to speak?”

“Granted.”

“Higher ups have declared you dead, sir.” They said, face drawn, “Commander Reyes and the rest of the Order aint takin’ it well.”

“Dead?” He arched a brow.

“Aint seen ya in two n’ a half months,” They shrugged, vaguely, “Figure y’froze t’death in the mountains.”

“I see.” He frowned, “And I don’t suppose I’ll be able to sneak in to talk to Commander Reyes?”

“No, sir.” They shook their head, nearly apologetic in tone and expression, “Security got tightened somethin’ fierce after some idiots raided the base last month.”

A lot of possibilities and thoughts swirled through his mind, and most of them ended with that cold, jagged anger expanding in his chest.

_ Commander _ Reyes.

Gabe always had wanted that promotion.

The only thing stopping him had been Jack and the thought that they might be split up because of their relationship.

Jack out of the picture meant the promotion was his ― for real, seeing as he’d taken it and the team.

Something in him wanted to snarl, but he refrained.

Just gazed at the Corporal as he processed.

“Name.” He finally ordered.

“Corporal Miguel Navarro,” Was the instant reply.

He nodded.

Good name.

… Lots of Latinx in Phobia, he was noticing.

“Corporal Navarro,” He said, “I have no further orders for you at this time. I will find a way to contact you if anything arises.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled and ears open, sir.” They promised.

“Good.” He waved a hand, “Dismissed.”

They nodded, saluted, and hustled back off into the woods.

And he let himself be consumed by the cold anger welling up in his chest.

How  _ dare _ those slimy, no good fucking…

He snarled and slammed his fist into the rotting wood of the back wall of the house.

It splintered and shattered beneath the force of the blow, leaving a hole much larger than the rotting itself could account for. He cared not, however, for the excessive damage.

He just snarled and huffed and tried not to throw another punch.

Clearly something was fucking amiss here. Someone had planned this.

Someone important.

And he was starting to suspect that Gabe ― Gabe, who he had foolishly trusted with his life all this time and who he had almost trusted with his shrivelled black heart ― had had a part in it.

“Furious” no longer fit the extent of his anger.

No word did.

Not even the scream dying to tear its way out of his throat could put proper emphasis on the depth and feral nature of the feeling.


End file.
